A testament to the beauty of the Esperanto language as spoken by San Diego natives. The album consists of thirteen cover songs performed in Esperanto. Found at the Purple Heart thrift store (San Diego). Flugadi was featured in 2003 on the 365 Days Project.

What is Esperanto? (from the Virtual Esperanto Library):

Esperanto is a language designed to facilitate communication between people of different lands and cultures. It was first published in 1887 by Dr. L. L. Zamenhof (1859-1917) under the pseudonym "Dr. Esperanto", meaning "one who hopes", and this is the name that stuck as the name of the language itself. Esperanto is considerably easier to learn than national languages, since its design is far simpler and more regular. Also, unlike national languages, Esperanto allows communication on an equal footing between people, with neither having the usual cultural advantage favouring a native speaker. Esperanto's purpose is not to replace any other language, but to supplement them: Esperanto would be used as a neutral language when speaking with someone who doesn't know one's own language. The use of Esperanto would also protect minority languages, which would have a better chance of survival than in a world dominated by a few powerful languages.

Comments

what i love about this post is that it truley is a great record find, also it is in a language, which noone understands, except for some language professors i guess. i've never heard esperanto spoken, or sung for that matter, this record is what the 365 day project is about...kudos on this find!

great lp! i figure this blog is as good a place as any to ask: how many out there actually have 'ni kantu in esperanto,' the first ESP-disk release?
i've seen one copy in 20 years (not mine, sadly). i've always been curious how many survived.
the cd of it that stollman burned for me is in another city right now ... but if i can find his email, i'll ask if he could post a few of those tracks to the 365 project.

Alberta is far from the only singer to record in esperanto, it's actually an ongoing practice.

In many ways esperanto speakers (estimates vary on how many speakers from 50,000 to 2,000,000) are like a self-selected ethnic group and take on a lot of the practices of immigrant groups (cottage industry music by people with other day jobs, lots of amateur poets, even theater groups ...).

Where I live there's a yearly three day gathering with a number of cultural events (lectures on various subjects, dramatic presentations etc). There's also a 'book service' (different book sellers bring their wares but it's all sold in one spot). They usually have a dozen or more different casettes or cds.

A very quick search found the following site (out of brazil, which has one of the larger national 'movements') with over 200 mp3's by various artists.

About 45 years ago I bought in Argentina a 45 rpm record with 4 tangos sung in Esperanto.
I invite all the readers to find out what Esperanto is and learn it. It will take much less time than learning any other language. See how people use Esperanto:
http://esperantofre.com/book
Learn Esperanto: http://esperantofre.com/eroj/ilo01a.htm

You can write to me. Please find my address in my pages at esperantofre.com
Best wishes,
Enrique

There was a beautiful moment last July at an Esperanto conference in Mexico, when a dancer dedicated her dance to Alberta Casey, who was in the audience. The music was Alberta Casey singing "San Diego" and it was very touching to see all of that happen.

On another note, anybody who has an interest in languages, international relations, or studies of other cultures, should take a look at Esperanto.